Dead flies: A Love Poem.

There are exactly three flies 

Left in the Methow Valley.

One sits on your window sill. 

It lounges on the dust 

You've been meaning to get to. 

It rises slowly and taunts 

Its wings heft the couch potato--

A procrastinator. 

He should be dead,

If not for the abundant food 

He'd have kicked last night,

But his heart just wasn't into it. 

The other two float in my coffee.  

As the morning sunk its teeth 

Deep into the day, the cup

Left abandoned in a search for socks

Which may or may not match. 

They saw the tepid opportunity. 

They did not choose wine--

The romantic approach.

They just looked at each other,

Shrugged, and hung heads low. 

"Not another Monday," 

And got the job done in no time. 

I imagine them holding hands. 

Not wanting to go it alone. 

Into a cup 2/3 full of liquid muse. 

We should be so lucky.  To find 

That worthy pairing in the world. 

But really, all love aside

With the population of flies--

They were just lucky enough 

To find someone

Anyone. 

Good enough to share their last

Moments over a cold cup of joe. 

Local Spectacle--Jazz Hands for Life's Mundanity.

Here I am again. Blogging about me and all of that. I'm not sure whether y'all get tired of me talking about me. I do. But it doesn't really stop me, now, does it?

So, on Sunday, a few short hours after Whidbey Island MFA residency opened up their applications for non-students, I applied. In under 48 hours I was "enthusiastically ACCEPTED." Yes, it really was in all caps. Yes, the word "enthusiastically" was used. I did a little dance in my car after work. Okay, I danced a little more than I usually do, but now that I am a local spectacle I'm all right with working it whilst driving. That's what being a multitasker is all about.

I am a spectacle in this valley. There are a handful of us, and we all know eachother. We have a handshake. It resembles a wink/shake/nod/hug/kissykissy-on bof' cheeks. We are the ones who entertain the mini-masses within this little area. We play music or DJ or dance or perform standup or act or help put on fundraisers/parties/art shows. We are the ones who drag the good members of this community from their homes after a long day's toil. But yanno what? It's necessary, people.

Without the arts scene in this valley you would be B-O-R-E-D. You'd resort to watching Jersey Shore or Snarky Girls or YouTube videos of video-game-playing basement-dwellers who provide their own commentary and even have Hitchcockian convos with their imnaginary mothers a la Norman Bates (I have a daughter and she is b-o-r-e-d with me so she watches this kind of thing).

It's the art scene that drags you out of your doldrums and unruts your life. It's needed.

Tonight I damned near fell out of my dress on stage while dancing with a poor teen from the crowd. And this was after I can-canned and flipped my ruffled rump to the crowd....

As it happened, I was unaware that there would be children in the front row. PS- If you take your child to a Broadway musical review, you should probably be aware that there are only so many child-appropriate musicals in the world. To you, dear watcher-of-the-arts-with-your-spawn, I commend you. You are giving your children an early cultural education. Kudos. On the other hand, if you're offended by musicals and dancing and a little (more than this cooler season should allow) cleavage, well I'm sorry. I hadn't intended on the show being THAT expository.

But this is what we have to do. We have to show folks what being goofy is all about. And sometimes life can be boring, monotonous, mundane, or (dare I say it) a downright bummer.
And then here we are--the jazz hands on life's mundanity.

I should be embarrassed to acknowledge myself as a local spectacle. But I'm not. This is what is so fun about this precious little valley has to offer: They support the quiet, the loud, the smart, the needy, the confused, the people who need an extra dancer for their piece at the last minute. We see a need in this community and we fill it in our own little ways. Mine just happens to be a bit goofier than others.

Yup. We are goofy (Me and the beloved DJ Joe Pop at the KTRT benefit)

Five Years.

I was notified today that my Writing.com account celebrated its five year anniversary.

This sort of blew my mind.

Five years ago today was the first time that I had plugged into a search engine "writers' support" like I was in desperate need of a hotline that would rid me of this insatiable habit. It started with my first new computer in a strange new place (New Iberia, LA) where I was alone with my children for a good portion of time. We had no internet.
So in the middle of the day, when my one year-old was sleeping and my five year-old off at school and our meager belongings were righted in their places, I wrote a title.

What Makes Magnolia Puke?

It was a game that we had chosen to play to lighten the mood after my daughter's life-long delicate stomach issues had yet to resolve themselves (five years later, she is much better, thank you).

I had no intention of moving beyond the one simple question. But later in the day, I had written another title. And then another until the page was full of the one-line statements arranged themselves in a non-sequitor poem on the blinking white screen.

I left the page alone for weeks.

Then one night, after the children were in bed I wrote my first story about Magnolia. And I laughed at the silliness of it all. I peeked through the windows because I was embarassed about clicking away on the computer with no particular agenda. If someone would have knocked on my door, told me that I would go to college for English (English?! You've GOT to be shittin' me.) and spend the majority of the next five years working on some great process of becoming a writer, I would have scoffed and choked on my Jameson Egnogg Coffee cocktail.

Not me, I would have said, tipping my head a little lower. "I'm just a mom."

"I'm just a mom" was my token excuse for years. It helped me get out of being accountable for my dreams and passions. It was the easiest way to overlook potential. But even being "just a mom" couldn't really help me overcome this storytelling compulsion. I'd write my nightly story, usually about the eccentricities I noticed in others, and tuck them away on my desktop and resume motherhood. It became my shameful indulgence. I regarded my stories in the same way one regards being a closet smoker or drug addict. But I kept going.

Within a year, I emailed my mother a story. I remember my stomach twisting in some unexplainable horror when I sent it. It was too close to who I was, and I really didn't feel comfortable with sharing that. My mother became my worst enabler (and remains so to this day). I couldn't help it. Letters to words to thoughts strung webs through my brains until there was nothing left to do but release them onto the back of a bill or an old piece of homework or my wrist. I began pulling over mid-commute to drop a few mischievious words that, though they were probably strange bedfellows, looked good together. Writing made my daughter late for school on more occasions than I'll admit.

Then on October 1st, 2008, I realized that this love affair with writing was unavoidable and needed to be dealt with. Five years ago today.

And today--tonight--I sit at a computer with notbooks stacked up to my eyeballs full of stories and thoughts. The dishes still need cleaning. The living room is a wreck. And instead of switching over the laundry, I had to stop and spill out a few extra words rambling around in my head.

Five years ago, I had an addiction. It was a fiery, fearless and whimsical idea that I could get away with writing a few stories here and there and never share them, never let anyone know what I was doing into the wee small hours of the night, never need to write another story. I could stop when I wanted.

And now I cannot stop, nor do I want to. There are many days where I write long exciting stories that make me sway and smile in my office chair. Many of these days I simply tuck the stories way into an obscure drawer safe from criticism. These are my babies who you will probably never meet. They are far too fragile and too dear to offer up to other eyes, but the eyes aren't really important. It's the sacred space of communicating the subjective world. I am witness to my beloved friends and family and strangers, and every night I bear witness to the world.

In five years, I have honored this love of stories. In five years I have grown. And maybe someday I will stop writing altogether. But what I can tell you now, friends, is that today is not the day.

Sisters.

In all honesty, it is a wonder how either me or my sister survived our childhood. We were positively wretched to each other.
Granted we did not arrive to adulthood unscathed--I still feel mentally inferior to everything on two legs while my sister probably has patches of hair still missing or perhaps she's developed an irrational fear (perhaps rational) of slugs being dropped down her swimsuit--but in thegrand scheme, we survived (and neither of us can afford therapy which is probably the reason we just chose to soldier on).
But in all the terrible experiences, we had truly good moments as well.
I remember how we'd spend countless car trips reenacting our favorite death scenes. Taking turns fading into eternal slumber, our eyes would roll back and flicker and with our last living breaths we'd say our labored final words.

One of us was better than the other, mind you. One of us is now a professional actress in Seattle and teaching at a schmancy art school. The other one lives in a trailer by the river and still has yet to perfect artfully playing dead...no matter how many Saturday mornings I work on it.

Over the last fifteen years the two of us have barely occupied the same room. This is not (entirely) because we dislike each other or disagree about everything and fight like sisters, but because we are just so damned busy.

But this weekend I had the blessed opportunity to visit my sister in her natural habitat: Capital Hill, Seattle, WA, also known as "civilization." Less than a block from the bustling Broadway, I took my children hither and thither with the aid of my wonderfully giving little sister.

She took us to her band practice, a punk band that covers show tunes called Argentina Weeps. They were magical. I knew (almost) every word and sang them proudly....not that anyone would know. My son, less experienced with ear-splitting punk, assumed the fetal position in his sister's lap, his hands over earplugs in ears. He puts the "feral" in "feragile." Okay, maybe that was just concocted at this moment, but you get the picture.

My sister and I went to dinner. It was perhaps the first dinner hermana a hermana in ever (literally). We caught up on our lives. And really it was more like an introduction. This was not the bratty girl who'd fall to the ground and blame me for hitting her. This was not the fresh-chested sophomore in highschool I had last lived with. This was a woman. A beautiful, and capable woman whom I am truly lucky to have as a sister. She's smart, not a smart-ass. She's graceful, not a gangly, awkward teen. She is hitting her stride, and I'm fortunate that I get to see her (even if it is just a few times a year) in action.

We met up with a girlfriend later, a girlfriend whom I haven't spent a whole lot of time with in 12 years. She is now friends with my sister. We all laughed and walked hither and thither around Capital Hill, chatting and catching up.

And in all of the glorious moments of the evening, my favorite was the walks spent giggling with one another, learning each other for the first time as grownups.

The Mother Awards.

I wrote my Academy award acceptance speech when I was eight. I believe that I recieved it when I performed a stirring reenactement on "Neverending Story" where I played the lead, Atreyu, while standing in a radio flyer with my sleeping dog tied to the handle.
The crowd was silent--too moved for words--after my performance (the minor detail being that my audience, said pooch, was alseep). I never knew what happened to that award speech, but I imagine that the delicate words, scrawled on the even more delicate toilet paper, drifted into the ether.

We are all famous when we are eight. We come home with prizes and awards when we are children (all except for the award for sitting quietly in class which was given to the girl that is probably winning the Nobel Peace prize today).

Today, the mothers of the world take home far more interesting prizes. Just today, I was given an award. The trophy looked like a tall, slim gray angel. It was the "dirtiest soccer sock in the world" award, granted to me by my daughter. "Look what I found!" she said as she triumphantly yanked the all-but lost petrified thing out from under the car seat. "I can't believe it!"

Neither could I, because I was given a similar award not two weeks prior. On the bright side, the car smells less like death and sweat-socks now.

Another or my accumulating mother trophies is the "your child finally remembered to bring home their lunchtime tupperware award" or as I affectionately call it, "the trojan horse."  This one sits on the back porch like a shining land mine. "DON'T TOUCH IT!" I screamed to a girlfriend who came by a few days ago. "It's either a trophy, or a land mine."

Just yesterday I recieved the "next person to clean the dog" award. As Rover came trodding over to me, dumb smile skidded acrossed his face, I knew there was something wrong. Being downwind of him, primed me to the honor I was about to receive.

I'm also up for the sock-matching award, the kitty-litter award and the peeling-clothes-out-of-the-bottom-of-the-hamper award.

So tonight, I gave myself a you-made-it-through-the-day award. It was not crusted with sweat or a damp shoelace knot. Oh, no. This trophy resembled a large glass that was filled with wine. Sometimes we deserve these shining moments worthy of celebration. My cat was kind enough to grant me yet another award for the day. "No, thank you," I said, nearly overwhelmed with the kudos and accolades I had already received throughout the day.

Too late. I'm already dealing with the "clean the wine off the couch" award.

Someday, I'll begin work on that speech again.

The County Fair.

As American as an eagle eating an apple pie, the county fair has long been a staple of the rural dweller. The annual haaj takes place in the usual fashion--once landed in the sea of semi-orderly dirt parking lots, we follow the wafting smells of manure and sweet fried things. Folks in cowboys boots and bedazzled jeans fall into step with us on our trek to the almighty gates where some geriatric Kiwanis member, adorned in all their polyester glory,  smiles, whisps away a day's income, stamps out hands (and for the kids, two), and then smiles again.

The gates would seem to suggest some unparallelled heaven awaiting on the other side. I use the term "heaven" here subjectively.

In an instant, the children multiply exponentially and vanish into the shiny, blingy, plastic ambiance. The smarter of the parents tether their children with ropes or leashes. I prefer the sleeker, more effective mode of child-homing known as the wallet.

The wallet contains many features. It offers the promise of greasy treats and raffles and cotton candy. Guaranteed the younglings will not journey out too far from pocket.

The fair itinerary appears to follow some collective modus operandi. Animals first, then food, then rides. Elephant ears are frowned upon in the petting zoo by all but the goats. We arrive as a herd at the barn doors and are ushered in two by two where we are lead through a series of gates and chutes and aisles.  The moo's and baaah's of the animals as they watch us go by compliment the "ooh" and "awww" from the people viewers quite well, though in this perspective, it is not quite certain who is really the observed.

I have never really gotten the hang of the stall walk, that shuffle, shuffle, stop we all do. This usually leads to a bit of awkward bumping into folks and apologizing.  I always end up bumping into an old friend accidentally and we smile and ask how the kids are and then politely depart never having remembered eachother's names.

We all breathe gratefully at the barn door. The sweltering scent of poultry or livestock isn't the most pleasant--especially on the fifth day of the fair. The kids jump and giggle, elbow-deep in cow/horse/goat/pig hair, dander, and filth and are immediately famished.

I do not understand why the desire to eat coincides with carnival rides. To me it seems a bit counterproductive. Nevertheless, the ride tickets and the deep-fried chili-dogs are neighbors.

All of the rides move in a circular fashion is nothing new. Carnivals have been inducing nausea to countless thrill-seekers for over a century. The differences between each ticket-sucking beast is purely nuance.
Here are my favorite rides I noticed at the fair:
1) The Tip-Top (2 tickets). This device resembles a rusted cake with Easter-egg accents. The Easter eggs tip ever so slightly while they spin, swivel AND gyrate.
2)The Sizzler (3 tickets). This one, though it only spins with two moveable axes, comes with the velocity needed for those cool emo haircuts those kids used to wear. It also is a wonderful source for irrepairable neck damage.
3)Round Up (3 tickets). This is the ride where you are strapped to the wall and thanks to centrifugal force, you and your stomach contents are completely flattened.
4)The Tornado (3 tickets). This one is cyclical hell without a foothold. Not that I was witness, but I'm guessing that this ride comes with the widest projectile rate.
5) The Ferris Wheel (3 tickets). If it weren't for my latent trust issues with carnival ride operators, I might have taken this one. Well, that and the fact that the fella usually says "don't rock the seat" every time he buckles you into a seat that rocks. I just don't get it.
6)The funhouse (2 tickets). I can only imagine what has taken place in the funhouse after hours.

The odd thing about the fair is that you return home exhausted, penniless, and stomach content-less. The only token of the fair is a smeared stamp that was previously a cow and now has morphed into some twisted Rorschach and one lonely ticket.

The fair has no use for one single ticket. No. They come in sets of two or three or more.  The single ticket simply goes unnoticed and unnused and sits in your pocket as a reminder that simply one ticket is no good until it ends up a purple grub in your dryer's lint catcher.

But the lasting impressions on the children's faces make up for everything. They fill their Monday's with stories about eating the most cotton candy and other stories about the bright blue stain on the car's carpet. These are lasting....until next fair.

Photos smuggled from Oregon History Project and Reverbnation.

Let's talk about poop: This is why I can't socialize with real writers.

Being around artist-type people terrifies me. I get sweaty-lipped and tend to stammer. This weekend, at the Mazama Festival of Books, I did just that among some of the most brilliant current writers.

This was the Book Fest's second year. After being present for the first, I can tell you that this festival is growing and getting better every year. The minds brought together to discuss the world as seen through today's artistic lens were nothing less than magical.

Mazama is a small town tucked tightly in the bosom of the Cascades. The view of  mountains' cleavage from the valley floor is enough to leave your jaw collecting pine needles on the ground. This glorious sight provided the backdrop for the audible feast provided by an armful of bookwriters.

While taking notes for each session, I realized that I had written "BUY THIS BOOK!!!" next to each author's credits. From discovering identity through travel to finding oneself in confronting violent death, these authors offered their audience more than just a snippet of their works: They offered us glimpses into their psyches and souls and craft.

The artists spoke with tongues attached to well-oiled mindmachines. Each word resonated. But again, these are published writers. They have reached the shiny polished pinacle with their names embossed on the glossy covers of tomes and chapbooks alike. I want a glistening tongue attached to a keen machine mind like theirs.

For now, I just listen.

But as I listened to one of the sessions (from a perch far in the back), a woman came up and rubbed my head then apologised quickly. "I'm so sorry," she said. "You probably don't like that."

"I love it, actually. I shaved my head to become vulnerable, and as it turns out, people are far more gentle that I give them credit for. It is myself who is the harshest, so please, pet me. I really love the intimate affection of connection."

This is what I have rewritten as a response. I really said something like, "uh, that's all right. It feels nice."

If James Joyce were listening, he would have beaten me with Dubliners for my flaccid use of "nice."

During the social hours, I stammered at some brilliant people. "So what do you write?" I was asked.

"Y'see I haven't published anything in years because all that I've done is talk about the toilet habits of children while more or less avoiding my deep-seated personal issues and now I'm just trying to make sense of my seemingly shit-filled existence with real introspection, substance, and empathy. I strive to acheive ultimate vulnerability and thereby flourish in a world that doesn't beg the question, 'number one, or number two?'"

This is what I wanted to say, oh yes. But I really said, "Oh, I've written a novel and a screenplay and a bunch of short stories, but mostly I blog on the internet about being a mom. It's mostly toilet humor."

Image provided by uncyclopedia.wikia.com 

Toilet humor? Yes. That's what I whiddled my writing down to. Poop. At this point the writer's gaze would lift to the crowd around, looking for an opportunity to exit the conversation.

Standing alone within a writhing and bubbling milieu I so wished was mine, I made a vow: No more toilet humor. No more stories that involve the gory details of a mother. I would write beautiful prose...or at least I would write until I got there.

Twelve hours into our book-filled day, I scooped my chitchattering imps into the car. We sighed a collective thanks-- thanks for the beautifully dynamic day, thanks for the brilliant gift of art, thanks for the other children who played so well in spite of the erudite cultural aura hovering just above the valley floor. We listened to the calm the evening gave us. This lasted for a miraculous 45 seconds before-

"I took a poop in the outhouse today. It smelled really good. And the water was still blue!"

My son smiled reverently.

Mark Twain said "Write what you know."

I guess my muses won't be like this forever. What I know will grow soon enough. Until then, there will be toilet talk and all the rest that comes with parenting.